Time Hoppers: The Silk Road, an animated film co-written and directed by Canadian Flordeliza Dayrit, had a limited theater release in early February 2026. This indie film is created by Muslim Kids TV and seems to primarily focus on Muslim audiences. 

It follows an inventor father and his daughter who flee from Seattle to Vancouver to keep an invention from being stolen. Once in Vancouver, Layla enrolls at her aunt’s school, Aqli Academy, and forms friendships with her cousin Khalid and two other children, Aysha and Abdullah. The father, Habib, reveals his time-travelling invention to the four children, and they are asked to collect information about Islamic history by watching footage from drones Habib has sent back in time.

However, they embark on a winding rescue mission once Abdullah accidentally time-travels. The three children join him back in time in Baghdad. There, they meet an evil scientist, Fasid, who is plotting to disrupt other scientists’ work. The children chase Fasid through Baghdad, Timbuktu, Cairo, and Aleppo. In every city, they meet and come to the aid of different Muslim scientists, including: mathematician Al Khawarizmi, emperor Mansa Musa, optics scientist Ibn al-Haytham, and inventor of the astrolabe Maryam Al-Ijliyyah. The film ends on a cliffhanger when Fasid and the modern bad guys might join forces, possibly hinting at a sequel. 

Review

As far as the film itself goes, the animation was good overall. The early action scenes of the film in Vancouver and Baghdad were enjoyable to watch, for kids and adults alike. Later in the movie, when the children are running around different cities at night, the animation felt a little stale and slightly sloppy. Fatima from Illinois, who watched the film with her four-year-old daughter and six-year-old son, said, “For their age, the effects were enough.” The voice acting was also good. The sound mixing of the dialogue within the film was of variable quality. In my particular showing, the speech of the characters was distorted to a distracting level for a portion of the film, and Shama in the DMV area experienced the same issue. I appreciated the musical score that accompanied the film. Overall, the film had a good enough production value for an indie project, and I was impressed at how high the quality was. 

I appreciated that the film explored different places in the Muslim world and showed the diversity of the ummah. The plot of the film was personally slightly confusing, and multiple people I interviewed agreed or commented that kids older than ten were bored. The film passed over the various scientific achievements from the past on a surface level, and it would have been nice to further explain them. Many parents I interviewed raved about the Muslim kids playing superheroes and liked seeing characters who were wearing hijab and identifiably Muslim.

Perplexingly, Ibn al-Haytham and Al Khawarizmi were depicted as weak and scared characters with the added trouble of them mumbling, which made them difficult to understand. Whether or not that is historically accurate to the scientists themselves, I would have hoped the film would portray the scientists as superheroes in their own right, similar to how Layla and her friends are portrayed.

The resonating message the film tried to send to kids was not an Islamic one per se, but one that focused on emotional growth. There was an undercurrent about being brave running through the story, but I can’t recall how it was resolved by the end of the film. The plot and some aspects of the film left more to be desired, but I do believe the film tried and succeeded at making Muslim children feel proud about themselves and their rich history

Audiences applauded this landmark effort as the first film for Muslim children to hit theaters in America. My six-year-old son exclaimed he loved the film, specifically, “learning all the new things, seeing all the places, and everything that happened back in time.” He spent some portions of the film covering his eyes due to the suspense in some of the scenes. Out of the 15 kids at our showing, all seemed to enjoy it except for a couple of the older middle school-aged kids.

I’d recommend this film for children between five and nine years old. As a parent myself, I’m excited for my son to see a Muslim animated film as the first film he’s ever seen in theaters. Ghada, another parent at the film screening we were at, said, “It was a good attempt. You have to start somewhere.” Ifrah, who took her six children (ages ten to four months), appreciated that it was just under 1.5 hours, and said all but one of her children seemed happy enough to sit through the whole movie. Nadia from California took her 12-year-old daughter and said, “All in all, it’s a great concept, and we’re happy to support a Muslim animated film.” Paola from Illinois raved, “I loved the film!” and noted how it was so special to see Muslim kids portrayed as heroes. Every parent I talked to seemed to agree on two things: we’re rooting for this film and future projects for our Muslim kids to be a success, and the jokes that the soldiers told were a nice treat for the adults in the audience.

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